Finding the Names — Installment 59 (Roll 7: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1835–1836) — FREE

Finding the Names is a free series that transcribes America's slave-trade records from the National Archives' own scans, name by name, so descendants can find their families. Every installment is free — please share it.

Installment 59 — Roll 7, images 961–1,080 transcribed name by name by hand: 1,366 more entries (1,342 named, 24 unnamed) on 65 manifests, 317 pages. The series now holds 39,287 transcribed entries. Two of these images would not come down from the Archives' server by ordinary download and had to be fetched through the catalog viewer, so the record would have no hole in it.

The counts argue again. The brig Ajax's table describes 209 people, but her permission certifies 207 — the clerk counted her closing block as seven lines, though two children ride on their mothers' lines there. A Savannah consignment of the brig Augusta lists nine people against a permission for eight: the ninth is a woman of 26 whose name and class are struck through on the table. The schooner Washington's certificate says "Twenty Seven in number" while only 26 can be counted — her continuation sheet's top line is cut at the fold, and an entry may be hidden there. And the brig Dimon's certificate splits her seven people "Four Males and Three Females" where her own table splits them three and four.

Losses and absences run through these pages. The same Ajax endorsement reports "one dead & two Births" on her passage — none of the three is ever named. Maria Willis died on the brig Ariel. John and Lucy were "not on board" the brig Arabian at her Balize examination, nor were Horace and Catharine on the schooner Elizabeth; Christy Stewart, No. 66, was "taken on shore by the Shipper" before the Isaac Franklin sailed. Dick of the schooner Tantivy stands in no table at all: his examiner writes "One Slave on Board — Dick — Manifest Mislaid." The brig Pilgrim's seven people keep their ages, heights and classes, but the photograph is cropped and their names stand outside the frame. And the brig Avice's first entry was erased before she ever sailed — the St. Mark clerk, out of blank forms, had erased an earlier man's line and filled the form again; his explanation survives on the certificate at image 1067.

Small things, kept as written: the schooner Emigrant's 36 people, all shipped by one Maryland owner, headed by Nancy, 55, and carrying Jack Sampson, 70, and Grace, 71, with two entries that are only "Infant" and a third entered as "Infant Jacob"; Phillis of the Hunter, whose age is entered "10 August"; the brig Virginia's sheet, marked "Withdrawn," running off its frame at entry 34 with no continuation filmed in this range; and a Matanzas cargo appraisement, 113 bales of wool, filed among the manifests by mistake or by habit.

Includes a searchable CSV name list of all 1,366 entries (name, vessel, age, shipper, and more). Honest about gaps: illegible and conflicting entries are flagged, never silently fixed.

With Installments 1–59 the series now holds 39,287 transcribed entries. Start with the free guide, "Finding the Names," and the free Complete Set, which gathers everything so far in one download.

— Okey and Susan Barker, Trails End